The Reason Most People Fail When Learning Languages

Be sure to avoid this mistake!

Photo by Peter Law on Unsplash

Language learning has never been more popular.

Many people start learning because they enjoy pop culture and media from certain countries. Others do because they have family members who they want to communicate with, or because they want to unlock new career opportunities. These are all fantastic reasons to start!

Sadly, most people end up quitting for this reason:

They don’t set the right goals.

Good vs bad goals

A good goal is specific and has a clear definition of success.

“Become fluent” is a common goal, but it’s not a good one because:

• “Fluent” is incredibly hard to define. At what point do you go from being non-fluent to fluent? A person can be extremely proficient in a second language and not consider themselves fluent… and vice-versa.
• It’s a broad goal with no specific time frame. Becoming fluent is something that can take a matter of years to achieve, meaning most people will study hard for months and give up because they feel like they’re nowhere near achieving their goal.

Imagine if you started playing the guitar with a goal like “get good.”